A platform, such as a cloud content platform, may need to deliver multiple multimedia content items to a target device simultaneously.
For example, a cloud gaming platform may need to stream a game scene with an advertisement to customers' devices. The game scene and the advertisement may come from different video sources. It may be desired that the advertisement is overlaid on the game scene, or that the game scene is underlaid beneath the advertisement.
The conventional overlay/underlay process may work like this: Capture a primary image from a primary video source, for example a game, and copy it to a frame buffer in System RAM. Then capture an overlay/underlay (second) image from the overlay/underlay (second) video source, for example an advertisement and blend the overlay/underlay image onto the primary image in the frame buffer. Finally, encode the new image in the frame buffer into the target video. The capturing, copying, and blending require significant extra effort by the system. System bus, system memory, and CPU resources are impacted. In a high CCU (concurrent user) system, this extra effort can cause low performance and high power consumption by the server.
Therefore, a new and improved system and method is desired to provide a more efficient overlay/underlay process.